MPU Meeting Tuesday 8th March 2016

Inventory

No activity.

LCFG Client refactoring

The C library is almost finished - the XML reader section now gives sensible errors and uses memory efficiently. The code has been designed to be maintainable. Still to do: context-handling and documentation. The Perl code has seen work on the resource-handling and on making the code more maintainable.

SL7 server base

LVM is ready for SL7 - Matthew Richardson has integrated Alastair's suggested changes. Next, Alastair will sort out KVM support.

Alastair has discovered that network device naming on virtual machines is somewhat inconsistent and unpredictable. For example, an SL7 KVM guest on an SL6 host will get old-style network device names, and the network device names of SL7 VirtualBox guests on SL7 hosts will vary as the user varies the guest's virtual hardware configuration. We will therefore make virtual hardware use the old "eoth0" style of network device names.

MPU SL7 upgrade

We're asking all computing staff to try out sl7.nx.inf.ed.ac.uk and let us know their experiences. So far we have had mixed results, mostly discouraging. Nobody can get GNOME to work. MATE and KDE can be made to work - the former by running mate-session from the "Custom" NX session type - but sometimes with the wrong screen size.

Apacheconf

No further activity.

Miscellaneous development

SL 7.2 will become the default release this week for non-lab machines without DICE_STICK_WITH_SL71.

Operational

Stephen has been trying to get cgroup support to work (RT:76463), but it's tricky. Firstly the parser turns out to be very picky, for instance only accepting comments if the hash character is the first character on a line. Secondly there's a bug (882067) which means that the memory controller is only set up when the service is restarted after boot time.

The OpenSSL security problem didn't hit us because we had already disabled old protocols.

waterloo had a disk problem, which Chris dealt with. He will upgrade its firmware next week.

Starting the week of 11 April, Alastair will encrypt swap and tmp partitions on office desktops which have not recently been reinstalled.

This Week

• Alastair
  • Inventory project
    • continue working through TartarusWorkFlow
    • consider what next can be integrated into existing system, if anything
    • Check for systemic errors from clientreport
      • Look now that servers don't check monitors
    • Document clientreport
    • Document order sync code
    • Continue work on hpreport processing script
    • Consider milestones for inventory project
  • Remove default pool if ops meeting agrees
  • Think of a use for 'atom'
  • Deploy encrypted /tmp and swap conversion script
    • Deploy on office desktops now (week commencing 11th April)
    • Leave labs until end of teaching.
    • Need to warn users that Gnome3 may pop up a window about /tmp being full (when script is run)
  • SL7 base server
    • check metropolitan USB and CD
    • Continue work with FC and LVM
      • finish draft blog article http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/mpunit/2016/03/10/sl7-multipath-and-lvm/
      • check nagios notices if FC cable removed
    • network and bonding
      • Update https://wiki.lcfg.org/bin/view/LCFG/NetworkComponent
    • Get KVM going
      • Working, but still need to
        • look at new features of SL7.2 KVM
        • create an SL7 box with SL7 virt-manager so that we can update the SL7 guest template file
  • Schedule MPU meeting to discuss systemd ordering
  • Continue building computing.help honeypot
  • package up ILW stuff and document process
    • upload ILW2016 image to LCFG server (and put on DVD)
  • Read through SL7.2 release notes
  • Install 'opennx' client on SL7 (currently manually added to gala)
  • Apply firmware patches to metropolitanDRAC and Disk updates done, but not BIOS as doesn't work under SL7. We need compat-libstdc++ installed.
  • submit polkit bug to redhat - with Stephen
  • computing.help - email on feedback page -> new RT ticket email address
  • Blog aboutCheck device naming for virtualbox and kvm guests under consistent naming scheme kvm = eth0, virtualbox=en0ps3 (but that depends on exact virtualbox config which is under control of user, so can't generalise
  • Try SL7 NX service
  • Work on RT tickets

• Chris
  • Inventory project
    • continue working through TartarusWorkFlow
    • Look at clientreport modules for replacing firmwarereport
  • pkgsearch for SL7
    • reimplement as a yum web front end (yum search for keyword produce an html file of links to cgi to do yum info)
    • Need support multiple platforms
  • Liaise with George over iDRAC documentation (look through ops reports to remind)
  • SL7 base servers
    • test out rsync / rmirror (both client and server ends) - liaise with Neil
  • Schedule MPU stargazing meeting
  • Chris quick look at lm_sensors (re theia and hw monitoring)
  • Upgrade waterloo firmware
  • Check that all MPU computing.help pages up-to-date (wrt op meeting action)
  • Return skoll to spares list or to services unit
  • Complete DevelopDisasterMarch2016
  • Work on RT tickets
  • Document SL7.2 gnome changes (before we move stable to SL7.2)

• Stephen
  • LCFG client refactor stage 1
    • schedule debrief meeting
  • LCFG client refactor stage 2
    • document API
    • blog article (once documentation complete)
  • apacheconf
    • produce some recipes
    • talk at devel meeting
  • Think about PD - Interested in ZeroMQ
  • Investigate kernel component pipe moan by using shell commands instead of RPM module => waiting on 7.2 => activities list
  • LCFG server symlink to exam branches - produce reporting script and discuss with Graham
  • Circulate dmesg proposal
  • Apply firmware patches - circle
  • submit polkit bug to redhat - with Alastair
  • SL7 MPU
    • put SL7 ssh service onto stable and open up firewall hole
  • Work on RT tickets

-- AlastairScobie - 08 Mar 2016